Speaker 1: After the operation, he started mumbling loudly, then became hysterical.
Speaker 1: He was given a sedative, which had no effect, and
Speaker 1: his body began to twist about and his legs thrash
Speaker 1: about in the air. He was moved to a side room,
Speaker 1: but before he was moved, the patient, thrashing about in agony,
Speaker 1: bit a nurse who told how after a routine operation,
Speaker 1: the patient began growling and howling, disturbing the whole hospital.
Speaker 1: Drugs had no effect, and he suffered convulsions and he
Speaker 1: was violently sick. Saliva began foaming from his mouth, and
Speaker 1: he was unable to control his movements. He tried to
Speaker 1: hurl himself from the bed, and before she could catch
Speaker 1: him and stop his head hitting the floor, he bit her.
Speaker 1: By then six members of staff were trying to restrain him,
Speaker 1: and he appeared to be asking for water. When offered
Speaker 1: a glass, he spat water out and went mad, Hi, Hi, longtime,
Speaker 1: no chat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's been a while, but I guess.
Speaker 1: What what, we're back.
Speaker 2: We are back, and it feels really good.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I'm just the seat. It's like my
Speaker 1: button never left it.
Speaker 2: I know, right, It really does feel like no time
Speaker 2: this passed. True, it was kind of scary.
Speaker 1: I'm Aaron Welsh and I'm Aaron Aleman of Nike.
Speaker 2: And you're listening to this podcast. Will kill you. Welcome, Welcome.
Speaker 2: We're so excited to have you. Yeah, because there are
Speaker 2: so many more of you, yeah.
Speaker 1: Than there used to be, like a lot of thousands more.
Speaker 2: I gotta admit I'm a little nervous. Yeah, but I
Speaker 2: think we're gonna have a really fun time.
Speaker 1: I think this is gonna be great.
Speaker 2: So let's just go right in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's we have our microphones. Let's let's do this.
Speaker 2: We also have our very important quarantiny.
Speaker 1: Quarantiny what do we have this week? Oh? Well, this week,
Speaker 1: there's no question on what we're drinking. It's the hair
Speaker 1: of the Rabbit Dog.
Speaker 2: Oh what does that mean? Does that mean that we're doing.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's right. Raby, raby baby.
Speaker 2: You asked for it, you got it. Okay, so we've
Speaker 2: got the hair of the rabbit dog. Briefly, what's in it?
Speaker 2: Because we are gonna post the complete recipe on Instagram,
Speaker 2: on Twitter, on Facebook, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so if you're not following us on social medi's
Speaker 1: already make sure you do that. And that's where you
Speaker 1: can find in addition to these delicious quarantine recipes, all
Speaker 1: of our other info about fun stuff.
Speaker 2: Links to old episodes, information about us, and also booklists.
Speaker 2: Back to the Hair of the Rabbit dog.
Speaker 1: Right, what's in it? Let me tell you gin number
Speaker 1: one of course, great number two, grapefruit juice because that's delicious.
Speaker 1: Number three elderflower liqueur because we fancy, and of course
Speaker 1: the cardinal symptom of rabies is foaming at the mouth,
Speaker 1: so it's topped with a beautiful egg white foam oh yes.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, which also as dis e z ecologists drinking
Speaker 2: raw egg.
Speaker 1: You should have seen us trying to make it. We're like, oh,
Speaker 1: is this a right amount? How do you Is this
Speaker 1: gonna be safe for us to drink? We're taking one
Speaker 1: for the team here, guys.
Speaker 2: To make this cocktail, you mix some of the liquors
Speaker 2: together and then you layer the egg white filam on top,
Speaker 2: and then you're gonna place some long strands of grapefruit
Speaker 2: peel on top so that it looks like little bits
Speaker 2: of hair.
Speaker 1: So gross.
Speaker 2: Care of the Rabbit Dot I like to make things gross,
Speaker 2: though it's beautiful at the same time.
Speaker 1: It's fantastic, all right, Rabies. When I started researching, my
Speaker 1: idea for this story was to kind of start with
Speaker 1: a like, picture this you're a little like we did
Speaker 1: with tuberculosis. Yeah, but Teabs was really endearing and Raby's
Speaker 1: is not.
Speaker 2: It's a terrifying thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so I didn't want to get to depressing
Speaker 1: right off the bat, where like, we start a story
Speaker 1: and then everyone ends up dying in the story. So
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, which episode, Rabies. Here we go, Let's just begin.
Speaker 1: Here's where we're gonna start. We're gonna start at the beginning,
Speaker 1: which is, of course, with a bite. So you're bitten
Speaker 1: by let's say a dog. Okay, it doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be a dog. It could be a bat, or a fox,
Speaker 1: or a something I don't know, could be any number
Speaker 1: of animals. But we're gonna pretend like it's a dog.
Speaker 1: And in that dog saliva are thousands of little viral particles. Okay,
Speaker 1: So that's our first point. Rayby's is a virus. Okay,
Speaker 1: And if you remember from what we've talked about last season,
Speaker 1: viruses are basically just genetic material that's surrounded by protein.
Speaker 1: That's pretty much it. In the case of rabies virus,
Speaker 1: which is also called alyssa virus, that's the genus of virus.
Speaker 1: We're talking about five different proteins and one strain of RNA.
Speaker 1: That's the whole thing. That's all it is. Okay, all
Speaker 1: this mess is gonna come from five proteins and a
Speaker 1: little strand of RNA. M okay. So these viral particles
Speaker 1: happen to be shaped like little bullets, which is crazy.
Speaker 1: Like people are like, oh, they look like bullets, but
Speaker 1: then you look at a picture of them, they actually
Speaker 1: look like a bullet, like what's in a gun?
Speaker 2: That's crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's nuts. So you've been bitten and the saliva
Speaker 1: is now in your large gaping wound. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: let's call this. Let's say this wound is on your calf. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: that seems like a reasonable place where a dog would
Speaker 1: bite you. So you have a large gaping wound on
Speaker 1: your calf, it's bleeding everywhere, and it's covered in dog
Speaker 1: saliva and the saliva is filled with a little bullet
Speaker 1: shaped viruses.
Speaker 2: Uh oh, So what happens next? Do I want to know?
Speaker 1: Oh? You want to know? So what happens is the
Speaker 1: virus actually binds to these receptors on your muscle cells.
Speaker 1: They're called acetylcholine receptors, which basically is a receptor that
Speaker 1: your nerves use to transmit signals. So that's like the
Speaker 1: normal way that your nerve would talk to your muscle
Speaker 1: is through these receptors. So the virus binds to those
Speaker 1: and then it squirms its way in to your muscle
Speaker 1: cells and it starts to replicate. And because it's inside
Speaker 1: of your cell most of the time, if you get
Speaker 1: a giant, gaping bite wound, your immune system comes over
Speaker 1: and it's like, oh my god, we need to clean
Speaker 1: those up. There's saliva everywhere, and it does a really
Speaker 1: good job of like cleaning up what's going on in
Speaker 1: that large gaping wound. But this virus, it's already inside
Speaker 1: your muscle cells. Your immune system is basically useless because
Speaker 1: it can't attack your own muscle cells. It doesn't even
Speaker 1: know that anything's in there, right ooh, that's as it's great.
Speaker 1: So it just sort of hangs out in your muscle
Speaker 1: cells for a while, replicating itself and building up its
Speaker 1: own little army. Then once it's got its own little
Speaker 1: bullet army. It bloops its way out of your muscle cells.
Speaker 1: It travels across the space between your muscle and your
Speaker 1: neuron that we know is right there, and then it
Speaker 1: weasels its way into the neuron using the same receptors
Speaker 1: that we're on the muscle cell. So it's the same
Speaker 1: receptor on both the nerve and the muscle, and it
Speaker 1: just goes.
Speaker 2: So it just makes this easy little just a little.
Speaker 1: Jump, yeah, just a little jump. And then it travels
Speaker 1: up the nerve. So it travels from your calf up
Speaker 1: your nerve all the way to your central nervous system
Speaker 1: to your spinal cord, and then it travels all the
Speaker 1: way up your spinal cord to your brain. And that
Speaker 1: is how you get rabies. And it does this kind
Speaker 1: of slowly. I mean, I mean I got actually very
Speaker 1: mixed results when I was trying to figure out exactly
Speaker 1: how fast it's traveling up your nerve. Like the first
Speaker 1: source that I found was like, oh, it travels at
Speaker 1: a rate of one to three millimeters a day, and
Speaker 1: I was like, that's wicked slow. That's like very slow.
Speaker 1: And then the next one was like twelve to one hundred,
Speaker 1: and I was like, that's an insane amount of very
Speaker 1: that's not one hundred, what twelve? So the WHL expert
Speaker 1: on Raby's says eight to twenty. So I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: with that. That sounds good, Okay. So what that means
Speaker 1: is it takes about one to three months most of
Speaker 1: the time for it to make its way all the
Speaker 1: way to your central nervous system. So the incubation period
Speaker 1: for this virus is on average one to three months.
Speaker 1: But if you get bit somewhere like your face where
Speaker 1: a You've got a bunch of nerves there that it
Speaker 1: could travel on and be those nerves are real close
Speaker 1: to your brain, then the incubation period could be a
Speaker 1: lot shorter.
Speaker 2: Okay, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but isn't that crazy, Like this virus hitches a
Speaker 1: ride inside of your neuron.
Speaker 2: Right, let's talk about how crazy that is. It's ridiculous
Speaker 2: because what is the blood brain barrier?
Speaker 1: Okay, so the blood brain barrier. It basically prevents crazy
Speaker 1: infections from getting into your brain. There's not a ton
Speaker 1: of other pathogens that do this, that make their way
Speaker 1: into our nervous system. There are some something like herpes virus,
Speaker 1: something like vericella or chicken pox. Those viruses are also
Speaker 1: very good at hiding out in our nervous system, which
Speaker 1: is a great way for your body to not be
Speaker 1: able to recognize it because our body doesn't want to
Speaker 1: attack our nervous system because we need that, especially our
Speaker 1: central nervous system. If something goes wrong there, we're really
Speaker 1: really screwed. And so even your own immune cells have
Speaker 1: a hard time making it into your nervous system to
Speaker 1: be able to fight off invaders. Most of the time,
Speaker 1: the blood brain barrier keeps those invaders out to begin with. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it's already there, like it's ridiculous, and it just
Speaker 1: it traveled there on your nerve and so then it's
Speaker 1: basically there. Like once it's in your central nervous system,
Speaker 1: there's not really much that you can do. There. Happened
Speaker 1: to be five main phases of infection with Raby's virus. Incubation,
Speaker 1: which is what we pretty much just talked about. It's
Speaker 1: that period that on average last one to three months,
Speaker 1: but it honestly can be from like a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks to years and terrifying. It's terrifying, and it really
Speaker 1: depends on how many viruses get into your system from
Speaker 1: the very beginning. So if you got bit on the
Speaker 1: calf by a dog full of saliva that's full of
Speaker 1: viral particles, then the incubation period is probably going to
Speaker 1: be shorter even if they if you got bit on
Speaker 1: your calf, because it's not going to spend as much
Speaker 1: time in your muscle cells. It's just going to be
Speaker 1: able to hop straight into your nerves perfectly, okay, Whereas
Speaker 1: if you maybe got bit and like you had like
Speaker 1: two viral particles, then it could lay latent for a
Speaker 1: longer period of time. Crazy. So that's the incubation period.
Speaker 1: Then you have the prodrome, which I'll talk about in
Speaker 1: a second, acute neurological symptoms, and then coma and death
Speaker 1: and basically, yeah, that's those are the five stages, and
Speaker 1: we'll talk more about why, like death is it's just
Speaker 1: like a stage of Raby's infection at this point for humans. Okay,
Speaker 1: so the virus has already had this crazy journey, and
Speaker 1: sometimes you might actually start to enter the prodrome stage,
Speaker 1: which is the second stage, while the virus is still
Speaker 1: in your peripheral nervous system, so in the nerves in
Speaker 1: your arms or your legs or your body. And that
Speaker 1: stage is basically like you might have some tingling, some
Speaker 1: you're like nerve tingling in your arms or legs. You
Speaker 1: might have some muscle spasms, you might just have some weakness.
Speaker 1: But it's really not specific, and it's actually really mimics
Speaker 1: some other diseases like gion beret.
Speaker 2: So can you tell me what prodrome is usually used
Speaker 2: to refer to, Like, what does it mean?
Speaker 1: So? Prodrome usually means like the lead up to or
Speaker 1: the build up to a disease phase, at least in
Speaker 1: terms of disease. Yeah, and then once it makes it
Speaker 1: into your central nervous system, you'll start having these nervous
Speaker 1: system effects. And the thing that's such a bummer about
Speaker 1: rabies is that there's pretty much almost no hope for
Speaker 1: you once you get to that stage. So once you
Speaker 1: start showing clinical symptoms, the average time till death is
Speaker 1: like a week. Wow, And that's pretty much it. So
Speaker 1: there's two forms of rabies. One it hits the clinical stage,
Speaker 1: and one of them is called furious rabies ruh. And
Speaker 1: it's exactly what you think of as rabies. Like when
Speaker 1: you think rabies, you're thinking of furious rabies. Okay, And
Speaker 1: so we'll talk about all the symptoms of furious rabies
Speaker 1: in a second, okay, with the other form is called
Speaker 1: paralytic rabies, and it's just as deadly. It's just instead
Speaker 1: of having the furious form, you have exactly what it
Speaker 1: sounds like, paralysis.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So that one you tend to die a little bit
Speaker 1: more slowly, oh god. And then in furious form you
Speaker 1: die usually within five to seven days. With paralytic you
Speaker 1: might last like eleven.
Speaker 2: What a blessing? Yeah? What's the split on those? Uh?
Speaker 1: What do you mean this split?
Speaker 2: What proportion?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, great question. So it's almost seventy to eighty
Speaker 1: percent furious and then twenty to thirty percent paralytics. So
Speaker 1: furious is definitely the reason it's the most like, well
Speaker 1: known is also because it's the mo common Okay, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So I know you want to know about the symptoms.
Speaker 2: Yeah you're not.
Speaker 1: You read my mind, but you also you already know
Speaker 1: a lot of the symptoms, right, So what do you
Speaker 1: think of when you think of rabies?
Speaker 2: I think of.
Speaker 1: A fear of light, okay, fear of water, okay, sort of.
Speaker 2: Like angry angry spells, but also calm periods of like
Speaker 2: not comatose, but just sort of not moving. Okay, oh,
Speaker 2: foamy mouth.
Speaker 1: Sorry, here we go.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So all of those are exactly what the raby symptoms are,
Speaker 1: and so I want to talk about how those actually
Speaker 1: happen because it's ridiculous. Yeah. So the first one is
Speaker 1: actually it's we can talk about how two symptoms happen
Speaker 1: with one effect, and that's both hydrophobia the fear of water, which, like,
Speaker 1: what kind of a symptom is that I'm afraid of water.
Speaker 2: That's weird. It's really weird.
Speaker 1: So hydrophobia and foaming at the math, which is caused
Speaker 1: by excessive salivation, those are caused by the same thing.
Speaker 1: This is crazy.
Speaker 2: Okay, Okay, let me tell you about it.
Speaker 1: I'm really excited.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So the rabies virus has traveled on your nerves all
Speaker 1: the way to your central nervous system, right, It's made
Speaker 1: its way to your brain. Once it's in your brain,
Speaker 1: it keeps going and it'll travel to your salivary glands. Okay,
Speaker 1: but it's not only in your salivary glands. It's infected
Speaker 1: all of the nerves that innervate the muscles of your
Speaker 1: mouth and your throat, So if you try to swallow,
Speaker 1: it causes extreme and extremely painful spasming, muscle spasming, your throat,
Speaker 1: your mouth, its spasms and it's extremely painful. And this
Speaker 1: is because your salivary glands are where this virus replicates again.
Speaker 1: So it's replicating like crazy in your salivary glands, which
Speaker 1: is what produces excess saliva. That's why you get foaming
Speaker 1: at the mouth. Viral replication in your salvary glands. It
Speaker 1: infects all of the nerves in your mouth and throat
Speaker 1: because if you were to swallow that saliva, you could
Speaker 1: not transmit the virus.
Speaker 2: So it's like, don't dilute me, bro exactly. That's terrifying.
Speaker 1: Isn't that crazy? So the reason that people have fear
Speaker 1: of water is because if you were to be able
Speaker 1: to drink water, you'd wash away all the viral particles
Speaker 1: in your mouth.
Speaker 2: How did this evolve?
Speaker 1: That? I do not know, But isn't that crazy?
Speaker 2: It's this is like fiction. It does it.
Speaker 1: Sounds it's like a Michael Crichton Novelhen King.
Speaker 2: Stephen King.
Speaker 1: It is well yam kujo, by the way, But yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's that's why you get that crazy excessive salivation
Speaker 1: and this foaming at the mouth, and then you it's
Speaker 1: transmitted by biting because that's where all of the viral
Speaker 1: particles are, is in the saliva.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, and great, that's crazy.
Speaker 1: It's crazy, and it gets crazier. How Because the other
Speaker 1: thing that you mentioned was aggression, right, or at least
Speaker 1: like behavior modification. I really wanted to know how the
Speaker 1: rabies virus could cause this, like how does it end
Speaker 1: up causing this intense amount of aggression? And I actually
Speaker 1: didn't get quite as great of an answer as I
Speaker 1: was hoping for. Like I wanted one nice mechanism like
Speaker 1: it infiltrates your frontal lobe and releases inhibitions, but I
Speaker 1: didn't see anything like that. What it seems happens is
Speaker 1: that your neurons kind of just get very very full
Speaker 1: of virus. And this virus is very good at two things.
Speaker 1: The first is that, uh, okay, so we'll do a
Speaker 1: little background on how your immune system works. Okay, if
Speaker 1: you get infected with a virus in one of your cells,
Speaker 1: you have immune cells T cells that come around and
Speaker 1: they can you're your cell can send out a signal
Speaker 1: that's like, hey, hey, I'm infected, come kill me. And
Speaker 1: then that T cell comes over and it kills the
Speaker 1: infected cell, and it does that by what's called apoptosis,
Speaker 1: which just means cell killing essentially. So in theory, neurons,
Speaker 1: especially that are infected, signal to the T cells to say,
Speaker 1: come and kill me. And killing neurons is actually really
Speaker 1: bad because your neurons don't regenerate, right, That's not what
Speaker 1: happens in rabies. Rabies actually inhibits your immune system from
Speaker 1: killing any of the neurons. So you don't see widespread
Speaker 1: neuronal death in rabies.
Speaker 2: Okay, like you would expect to see if cell death
Speaker 2: were happening the way it should.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah exactly. And on top of that, so
Speaker 1: not only does rabies basically take away the signaling molecules
Speaker 1: that your neurons would normally use to tell your immune
Speaker 1: system to come and help out, So it basically like
Speaker 1: pulls those in and puts them away so that your
Speaker 1: immune system can't come in and help out. But then
Speaker 1: if your immune system does happen to come in because
Speaker 1: it heard about it from a friend or whatever, and
Speaker 1: it comes over, it kills off your T cells, so
Speaker 1: it induces apoptosis in your T cells. So now your
Speaker 1: immune system is just like poom pum killed killed, and
Speaker 1: your neurons are like, I'm gonna live forever full of rabies.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, how did this happen? Again? Is what
Speaker 2: is going on?
Speaker 1: I don't know, crazy sand And then on top of
Speaker 1: all that, so it's like literally just imagine it filling
Speaker 1: up your neurons, like blocking them in some places, blocking
Speaker 1: signals from being transmitted because there's just so many viral
Speaker 1: particles there, and also other things that come to be
Speaker 1: like what's going on and everything just blocks your neurons.
Speaker 2: On top of.
Speaker 1: That, there's at least some evidence that the virus can
Speaker 1: modulate the release of certain molecules like serotonin. If you've
Speaker 1: heard of serotonin. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that basically like
Speaker 1: your brain uses. It's one of the like happy transmitters.
Speaker 1: So if a lot of depression medications increase the amount
Speaker 1: of serotonin in your brain, that's how they work. So
Speaker 1: this can inhibit the release of serotonin, right, and it
Speaker 1: can inhibit the release of other neurotransmitters as well, So
Speaker 1: it basically just completely screws up all of your brain's
Speaker 1: normal signaling, and that's what can result in this aggression
Speaker 1: and also just weird behaviors. It's wacky. It just completely
Speaker 1: like it comes in and it like just destroys the
Speaker 1: way that your brain normally communicates with itself and with
Speaker 1: the rest of your body.
Speaker 2: It fully takes over, It.
Speaker 1: Fully takes over, and that's it. And so then you
Speaker 1: have viral encephalitis because your brain is just so full
Speaker 1: of this of this viral particle. It's like swollen. You've
Speaker 1: got immune cells trying to come in and just dying.
Speaker 1: So then you've got these dead cells everywhere and then
Speaker 1: and then and then you die.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and death just why how do you die?
Speaker 1: So actually, most of the time it's either cardiac or
Speaker 1: respiratory arrest, so your brain just either your brain just
Speaker 1: tells your heart to stop beating or your lungs to
Speaker 1: stop breathing or or something.
Speaker 2: It's yeah, that's terrifying.
Speaker 1: It's not it's not great.
Speaker 2: And talk to me about mortality rate.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's not one hundred percent. It's if
Speaker 1: it's untreated, it's one hundred percent. Essentially, even if treated,
Speaker 1: if you get to the point where you have any
Speaker 1: sort of clinical symptoms. It's also all almost one hundred
Speaker 1: percent fatal. We essentially have no treatment. We do have
Speaker 1: what's called post exposure prophylaxis, but that is not treatment.
Speaker 1: We don't have any anti virals that work on Rabies virus. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's bad.
Speaker 2: So what is post exposure prophylaxis.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so if you get exposed to Rabi's, you will
Speaker 1: get post exposure prophylaxis, which consists of a vaccine, which
Speaker 1: is in this case is just killed viral particles. And
Speaker 1: so by putting these viral particles that are dead, they
Speaker 1: don't replicate, they don't cause disease into either your muscle.
Speaker 1: It's either injected intramuscular, so into your muscle just like
Speaker 1: your tetanus shots are, or intra dermal, so right under
Speaker 1: your skin like maybe your TB test is. You can
Speaker 1: do either. There's two different vaccines that allows your immune
Speaker 1: system to actually generate anti bodies. Antibodies can make it
Speaker 1: into your brain and your nervous system and actually attack
Speaker 1: this virus.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, right, it's actually giving your body the opportunity
Speaker 2: to defend itself exactly before it gets all the way there, right.
Speaker 1: And so you'll get those, and then depending on the
Speaker 1: sort of category of your exposure, in addition to the vaccines,
Speaker 1: you're also going to get immunal globulins. So these are
Speaker 1: actual antibodies that they make in a lab that are
Speaker 1: specific to the rabies virus, and they're going to give
Speaker 1: you those near the site of potential infection, like near
Speaker 1: your bite wound or whatever. And then they're also going
Speaker 1: to give you vaccines because you want as much possible protection,
Speaker 1: as many antibodies as your body can generate, plus some
Speaker 1: extras to really try and kill this virus. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's intense, like, it's an intense course. Even if
Speaker 1: you've had the be's vaccine beforehand, it's still at least
Speaker 1: two to four vaccinations afterwards. If you've never had any
Speaker 1: sort of rabies vaccine, then it's it can be up
Speaker 1: to twelve. So yeah, it's not great.
Speaker 2: No, So we talked about the fatality in humans. With
Speaker 2: the mortality rate in humans, yes, what about dogs? About bats?
Speaker 2: What about other mammals?
Speaker 1: Great question, It's not one hundred percent fatal in bats. Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't know what the exact fatality rate is, but
Speaker 1: I do know that it's not like, not every bat
Speaker 1: who gets infected with rabies is going to die. And
Speaker 1: for dogs, at least one source that I found said
Speaker 1: that about fourteen percent of dogs infected with rabies can
Speaker 1: actually survive the infection. Yeah, which is way higher than
Speaker 1: I expected.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so okay, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so what the heck, dude, how did this? How
Speaker 1: did we get to have this insane virus that kills
Speaker 1: so many people? And that like it's.
Speaker 2: I can answer some of those questions with a little
Speaker 2: my own flavor in.
Speaker 1: There, perfect to make more drink, get more drinks. Yep.
Speaker 2: During our long long hiatus, we got many requests for rabies,
Speaker 2: and we've been, as we mentioned, very happy to oblige.
Speaker 2: And yeah, it's actually been at the top of our
Speaker 2: long list of diseases that we've wanted to cover for
Speaker 2: many good reasons, some of them you just heard about.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's just a super exciting disease. Yeah, right,
Speaker 2: And I feel like it's been part of of social
Speaker 2: consciousness for millennia, and as it turns out, it kind
Speaker 2: of actually has been there for millennia.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Whereas many of the diseases that we covered in our
Speaker 2: first season left these big imprints on society through huge outbreaks,
Speaker 2: with the victim counts and the tens of thousands, the
Speaker 2: hundreds of thousands, the millions. Raby seems more insidious and
Speaker 2: its effect on culture and humanity, the threat of madness
Speaker 2: and an agonizing death lurking in every shadow.
Speaker 1: Maybe Darth Sidius was rabid. Maybe that's why he was so.
Speaker 2: Evil, even for a science podcast that was really nerdy.
Speaker 1: I'm proud of it.
Speaker 2: I'm proud of you. Yeah so. But even with this
Speaker 2: relatively low death toll, it's no wonder that rabies has
Speaker 2: led to the creation of laws inspired supernatural tales, Oh
Speaker 2: my god, and continues to terrify even today, Oh my God.
Speaker 2: Before modern medicine and germ theory, the link between exposure
Speaker 2: and disease was let's say, tenuous and often incorrectly assigned
Speaker 2: bad air and imbalance of the body's humors. Cats, demons,
Speaker 2: the same thing, just kidding whatever, No, I'll take it.
Speaker 2: That hurtful.
Speaker 1: But also they weren't wrong about cats. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of disease there.
Speaker 2: Sure so, sure, but they're often blamed. We talked about that,
Speaker 2: we did, Yeah, but people needed an explanation for why
Speaker 2: they were sick, and so they received one incorrect though
Speaker 2: it may be doesn't matter. Sometimes the link was more
Speaker 2: easily drawn, such as in the case of rabies, which
Speaker 2: I think is pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: Also is interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you get bitten by a mad dog and you'll
Speaker 2: soon become mad yourself. Huh. Yeah, But how far back
Speaker 2: does this knowledge of this link extend? So I couldn't
Speaker 2: find anything about evidence of rabies virus and ancient DNA,
Speaker 2: but we do know a couple of things about its
Speaker 2: early history or prehistory.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay.
Speaker 2: So one of the things that we know is that
Speaker 2: it originated in bats, even though we probably most commonly
Speaker 2: associate rabies with dogs. Studies of the different strains of
Speaker 2: rabies virus show that it first spilled over from bats
Speaker 2: into dogs thousands of years ago, with additional spillover events
Speaker 2: occurring every so often and probably still happening today. And
Speaker 2: they needed to happen. These spillo events needed to happen
Speaker 2: because the rabies virus would kind of burn itself out
Speaker 2: by killing all the dogs.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: And it turns out that several types of rabies viruses
Speaker 2: are exclusive to insectivorous bats, so that means bats that
Speaker 2: eat insects, and some researchers think that around seven thousand
Speaker 2: to twelve thousand years ago, one of these bats picked
Speaker 2: up a virus similar to the rabies of virus from
Speaker 2: an insect at eight and it either recombined or mutated
Speaker 2: into the rabies virus that we know and up it today.
Speaker 2: Stop it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they think it came from an insect virus. Yes,
Speaker 1: this is why I'm an entomology. Are you kidding me?
Speaker 2: I didn't dig too deep, but it seems fascinating that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh that is freaking awesome.
Speaker 2: I know, it's really cool. Despite the fact that rabies
Speaker 2: came from bats, most of the early references to rabies
Speaker 2: center around man's best friend, the dog the pouchin which
Speaker 2: brings me to the other thing that we know about
Speaker 2: early rabies. We know that it has been observed and
Speaker 2: feared by humans for millennia, largely in association with dogs.
Speaker 2: This comes from the first written references to rabies, a
Speaker 2: law in the Mesopotamium Codex of Eshnuna or something like that,
Speaker 2: from around four thousand years ago, So like nineteen thirty BCE.
Speaker 1: They had a lot about rabies. Yeah, four thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: thousand years ago, and they wrote it down. That's how
Speaker 1: important of a law it.
Speaker 2: Was, especially considering that rabies only spilled over a few
Speaker 2: thousand years before that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Crazy, Oh my god. So under this law, if you
Speaker 2: had a rabbit dog and didn't watch over it and
Speaker 2: then it ended up biting someone and killing them, you
Speaker 2: would be fined. From that point on, we see a
Speaker 2: lot of references to rabbit or mad dogs. We see
Speaker 2: descriptions of disease progression, incantations, or treatment options. Ancient Greece
Speaker 2: lags a bit behind in their medical knowledge of rabies,
Speaker 2: which is unusual for ancient Greece, but they make up
Speaker 2: for it by giving the name to the family of
Speaker 2: viruses that rabies belongs to. So the rabies virus, as
Speaker 2: you mentioned, is known as Alyssa virus, and that is lyssa. Yep.
Speaker 2: The word lisa has origins either in lycos lecos licos
Speaker 2: for wolf or lude lud for violent.
Speaker 1: Oh kind of debated what which one it is? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And ancient Greeks used this word poetically to describe
Speaker 2: a primal animalistic rage. So, like Homer wrote about hector
Speaker 2: viciously attacking the invading Greeks in the Trojan War. He
Speaker 2: was in Alyssa or he was interesting. Yeah, and let's
Speaker 2: not forget Cerberus's spit, which I talked about in our
Speaker 2: crossover episode with Indefensive Plants many months ago.
Speaker 1: Oh, go listen to that if you haven't.
Speaker 2: So when when brought from the underworld to the surface
Speaker 2: of the Earth, the three headed Watchdog foamed at the
Speaker 2: mouth and thrashed about because he probably saw sun for
Speaker 2: the first time ever, I was afraid of light. So
Speaker 2: it sounds like Rabi's sad.
Speaker 1: For sure, or also just he was sloppery. I mean,
Speaker 1: we all know those dogs.
Speaker 2: M Lisa also meant straight up rabies to the Greeks.
Speaker 2: In a medical sense, Okay. The best early medical description
Speaker 2: of rabies comes from the Shushuruta Samhita, which is a
Speaker 2: Sanskrit text of ancient Indian medicine, and it actually does
Speaker 2: a really good job of describing the posture of rabid dogs,
Speaker 2: the fear of water, the inevitable death of a sufferer.
Speaker 2: So like this comprehensive, Like, yeah, you could look at
Speaker 2: that and go, ah, that's rabies.
Speaker 1: That clinical diagnosis check.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly to some rabies was a disorder of the mind,
Speaker 2: madness sprung up spontaneously in a dog, who then transferred
Speaker 2: it to you, while to others, rabies was a venom
Speaker 2: similar to that of a snake or a scorpion.
Speaker 1: How interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and whichever cause your doctor believed in dictated the treatment, which,
Speaker 2: let's be honest, was gonna work.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: No, At first, bite cupping or cauterizing the wound was
Speaker 2: a pretty routine option. Maybe filling it with clarified butter,
Speaker 2: which the victim was then supposed to drink.
Speaker 1: Wait, what you're telling me that they took your calf wound,
Speaker 1: they filled it with ghee, and then they told you
Speaker 1: to lick it out of your own calf wound.
Speaker 2: They might add some wine or something to it, but nah, Oh,
Speaker 2: that's like the most vanilla of all of these cures.
Speaker 2: And this is also where we get our hair of
Speaker 2: the dog, saying, oh, rubbing a few hairs from the
Speaker 2: dog that bit you. So, hair the dog is short
Speaker 2: for the hair of the dog that bit you. Yes,
Speaker 2: so rubbing a few of those hairs or maybe the
Speaker 2: burnt ashes from the dog's tail.
Speaker 1: Yikes, Oh, does that mean they burnt the whole tail.
Speaker 2: Yeah, poor, Yeah, into the bite wound was supposed to
Speaker 2: protect you against rabies.
Speaker 1: My gosh, Wow, that's a terrible idea.
Speaker 2: Another common preventative for rabies was to cut the ligament
Speaker 2: attaching the dog's tongue to its lower jaw, called the
Speaker 2: lissa or worm, and then carry that around with you. Well,
Speaker 2: you're supposed to walk around a fire three times and
Speaker 2: then put it in your shoe or a pouch and carry.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you don't carry the whole tongue. It's just
Speaker 1: just that little nuper thing.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep. So if you did it right, neither you
Speaker 2: nor the dog would get rabies.
Speaker 1: It's like, I want to see my dog.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So they would do it to puppies and stuff
Speaker 2: like that. Oh ba, And unfortunately, this very inhumane practice
Speaker 2: was carried out through the early twentieth century. Wow, seriously,
Speaker 2: I think it just goes to show what superstition and fear.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like we knew that's not going to do anything
Speaker 1: by then, Like what the heck?
Speaker 2: I know? Okay, So if those cures seem a little
Speaker 2: crazy to you, yeah, hold on to your butts, oh clenching,
Speaker 2: because I'm about to tell you what Pliny the Elder
Speaker 2: had to say on the matter.
Speaker 1: Wait, we've talked about Pliny before, right.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, he was pretty indiscriminate about where he got
Speaker 2: his information and just sort of kitchen sinked it. It
Speaker 2: was actually Pliny who came up with the hair of
Speaker 2: the dog treatment. Oh maybe probably who knows, all right,
Speaker 2: but he didn't stop there.
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, how.
Speaker 2: About rubbing I I apologize in advance.
Speaker 1: Oh just I skip forward twenty two seconds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, what about eating the dog's head?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: Okay, all right. Well, you can also administer the ashes
Speaker 2: of the tail of a shrew mouse, but only if
Speaker 2: the shrew mouse survived the tail removal and then was
Speaker 2: set free. It's the only way it's gonna work.
Speaker 1: You administer, you administer.
Speaker 2: So here's my favorite, though, the old skin of a
Speaker 2: snake that has been cast in spring. I don't know
Speaker 2: what that means. Beaten up weight with a male crab
Speaker 2: in wine, beating up death. I don't understix with a crab,
Speaker 2: a male crab, male crab in wine? You want those
Speaker 2: ovaries wine? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Oh that's a good question.
Speaker 2: Could be anything. Oh my god. Yeah, So I don't
Speaker 2: know what you do with that that. Also, it doesn't.
Speaker 1: Say what you do beat up a snake skin.
Speaker 2: But besides uh, curing rabies, it also will keep moths
Speaker 2: out of your chest and drawers. I'm not joking this,
Speaker 2: Piny the Elder.
Speaker 1: I love everything about the things that you find. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: doctor Aaron, Doctor Aaron, thank you, it's so good. Wow.
Speaker 2: Okay. In any case, the extremely wide variety of rabies
Speaker 2: preventatives or cures.
Speaker 1: Wait, so was the crab and snake thing a prevention
Speaker 1: or a cure?
Speaker 2: Who knows?
Speaker 1: Okay, both, a little bit of everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, most of these are preventions, I guess, preventatives if
Speaker 2: you were bitten.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, okay, post exposure profil axes if you will.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I will. Yes. So the wide variety of these
Speaker 2: is a pretty good indication that desperation drove people to
Speaker 2: try all kinds of things to try prevent themselves or
Speaker 2: their loved ones from dying a pretty horrific death makes.
Speaker 1: You feel sad laughing.
Speaker 2: And sometimes these cures probably appeared to work, either because
Speaker 2: the bite from the dog didn't break the skin or
Speaker 2: the dog was just angry and not rabbit. But really,
Speaker 2: no actual advancements in effective treatment or knowledge about rabies
Speaker 2: were made at all throughout ancient times and up into
Speaker 2: the Middle Ages. Past the Middle Ages really until Pasture
Speaker 2: set his mind to rabies in the eighteen hundreds. But
Speaker 2: we'll get to that later. Oh okay, this is this
Speaker 2: one more is just for you.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: If this is an eight this is a Middle Ages cure. Okay,
Speaker 2: if you are bitten by a rabbit dog, I want
Speaker 2: you to grab a live rooster, pluck all of the
Speaker 2: feathers from around its anis, and then hold said anus
Speaker 2: to the bite wound. Now now wait, wait, he can't wait.
Speaker 2: If the rooster swells up, it has sucked the poison
Speaker 2: out and you'll be fine. But if not, it's a
Speaker 2: nice note.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, I guess I don't have anymore poor
Speaker 1: freaking roots right. Also, I think it's called a cloacause.
Speaker 2: I know That's what I loved the best about this
Speaker 2: is that they called it an a and I was like, well,
Speaker 2: wait a second, there's just one hole as far as
Speaker 2: I'm aware.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, check that ologies agg episode if you don't
Speaker 1: know what a cloaca is.
Speaker 2: By the way, at this point in our rabies history,
Speaker 2: we've just kind of breeze past the Middle Ages, the Renaissance.
Speaker 2: Of course, you know, we're well into the Victorian era.
Speaker 1: They don't have it figured out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we're well into the eighteen hundreds, little to
Speaker 2: nothing to show for it besides a laundry list of
Speaker 2: cures that don't work, are more often than not inhumane,
Speaker 2: and probably smell really bad. But we've also got fear.
Speaker 2: After all these thousands of years, the bite of a
Speaker 2: rabbit dog carries as much horror as it did from
Speaker 2: the very beginning. True, the reputation of rabies as a
Speaker 2: viciously contagious and violent disease grew throughout this time, and
Speaker 2: it grew somewhat out of proportion to the actual risk
Speaker 2: of disease. As per usual, fear drove the widespread belief
Speaker 2: that a bite wasn't necessary for disease. A lick alone
Speaker 2: from a rabid dog would also lead to inevitable death.
Speaker 2: So while you mentioned that a lick can actually it's
Speaker 2: very rare. It's likely that an actual increase in rabies
Speaker 2: cases was responsible for some of this fear, But with
Speaker 2: it came some tragic consequences. Mass extermination of dogs following
Speaker 2: Rabi's outbreaks. A dog tax in Britain and France that
Speaker 2: restricted the ownership of dogs to the wealth, as if
Speaker 2: only dogs from poor people could transmit rabies and fear
Speaker 2: of rabies was probably responsible for adding a whole lot
Speaker 2: of color and depth to two classic figures in literary horror,
Speaker 2: the vampire and the werewolf. Both of them, both of them. Oh, okay,
Speaker 2: let's talk about this. Where wolves have been around for ages,
Speaker 2: they probably have their roots in a Greek myth about
Speaker 2: like Haan, a king who, according to one version of
Speaker 2: the myth, tried to serve the roasted flesh of his
Speaker 2: own son to Zeus to test Zeus's all knowing abilities. Zeus,
Speaker 2: being all knowing, found out immediately raged out, killed a
Speaker 2: bunch of Laichan's sons, and turned, like Haan himself into
Speaker 2: a wolf. Ooh, kind of loses it. And these elements
Speaker 2: transformation into a wolf or dog like creature, loss of control,
Speaker 2: and violence make up the hallmark of a werewolf. When
Speaker 2: the legend boomed in popularity in the sixteen hundred's Ish time,
Speaker 2: with one crucial thing added to the mix, the bite
Speaker 2: or scratch of a werewolf could turn you into one. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and This is still more or less how the werewolf
Speaker 2: is portrayed today, with a few exceptions.
Speaker 1: Do you mean wrong ones, Because that's the right. That's
Speaker 1: how you become a werewolf.
Speaker 2: It is law, it is correct. At some point the
Speaker 2: full moon became also crucial in werewolf transformation, which I
Speaker 2: will also point out was thought to correspond to times
Speaker 2: of increased rabies.
Speaker 1: Risk.
Speaker 2: I don't know why. Okay, yeah, but there do seem
Speaker 2: to be too many parallels between rabies and werewolves to ignore.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: On the other side of this coin is the vampire. Yeah,
Speaker 2: vampires have been around for millennia, and many different cultures
Speaker 2: have their own version of a vampire or a creature
Speaker 2: with a vampire like qualities, So pinning the creation of
Speaker 2: vampires on rabies is a little bit more difficult. But
Speaker 2: let's talk about the form of vampire that most of
Speaker 2: us are probably familiar with. Spike from Buffy Just kidding,
Speaker 2: that's the no, no, okay, the Dracula yees type, all right.
Speaker 2: This is the kind of vampire created in the early
Speaker 2: eighteen hundreds and popularized by Bromstoker in Dracula. As with werewolves,
Speaker 2: hypotheses as to the origin of vampires abound. But let's
Speaker 2: go through the evidence for rabies and see what we think. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: we've got fear of sunlight check check. No reflection check.
Speaker 1: Wait.
Speaker 2: Wow. A historic method for testing if someone had rabies
Speaker 2: was if they could recognize their own reflection. If they couldn't,
Speaker 2: it meant that the rabies madness had seized them and
Speaker 2: they were doomed.
Speaker 1: That is super fascinating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, a sexual nature check. So I'll keep this
Speaker 2: as PG. Thirteen as I can. Male sufferers in particular
Speaker 2: of rabies are reported to frequently get erections or ejaculate
Speaker 2: many times up to thirty and one day I read
Speaker 2: somewhere human male human males.
Speaker 1: This is I don't know, citation needed, citation needed, I'd say, okay, well,
Speaker 1: but anyway, there sexual nature.
Speaker 3: Maybe that's part of I don't know bats, so most
Speaker 3: deaf kind of check, I mean, is what I'm going
Speaker 3: to say. Because okay, because it wasn't really until the
Speaker 3: twentieth century.
Speaker 2: So the nineteen hundreds when people started linking the poison
Speaker 2: of some vampire bats to an illness and cattle that
Speaker 2: turned out to be rabies.
Speaker 1: I see. So it's like we know now that it's bats.
Speaker 1: But when people we're inventing this Bromstocker's dracula, they didn't
Speaker 1: know that it was bats. That's necessarily necessarily okay, yeah, right, okay,
Speaker 1: all right.
Speaker 2: And last but not least, biting, Yeah kind of check again. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so this is because dogs and other mammals definitely become
Speaker 2: aggressive and bitey when infected with rabies, But the disease
Speaker 2: doesn't really seem to necessarily make humans bite or to
Speaker 2: be able to transmit rabies through a bite, maybe because
Speaker 2: our teeth just aren't as good at breaking skin.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, there is not really a lot of
Speaker 1: cases of human to human transmission. Yeah, and that's in
Speaker 1: part because the disease doesn't necessarily progress to that exact Like,
Speaker 1: the symptoms aren't exactly the same between humans and dogs,
Speaker 1: for example, right or foxes. So we might become a
Speaker 1: g but not in a bity way because humans don't
Speaker 1: bite as a general rule, right, whereas carnivores like a
Speaker 1: dog or a fox, that's what they do when they
Speaker 1: get aggressive, is they bite.
Speaker 2: But yeah, so there we have it. Okay, some decent
Speaker 2: evidence for rabies as at least a partial inspiration for
Speaker 2: the modern vampire.
Speaker 1: Cool.
Speaker 2: There is a third supernatural creature linked to rabies that
Speaker 2: you may have noticed. I've conspicuously left out the zombie.
Speaker 2: The zombie, and that is because we are going to
Speaker 2: take a special episode to cover this topic in much
Speaker 2: more detail at another time. Yeah, so stay too, Just
Speaker 2: get really excited about it, because we are whether or
Speaker 2: not rabies inspired the legends of were wolves and vampires.
Speaker 2: It was clear that the disease had insinuated itself into
Speaker 2: public consciousness, and by the nineteenth century, fear of it
Speaker 2: had risen to historic levels. In the Western US were
Speaker 2: tall tales of quote phoby cats, Phobe being short for
Speaker 2: hydrophobia raby's telltale sign. Yeah, these animals, normally quite shy,
Speaker 2: would come wandering into a cattle herder's camp and bite
Speaker 2: indiscriminately when rabi's infected, with nearly one hundred percent fatal
Speaker 2: outcomes for the poor soul's bitten. Do you want to
Speaker 2: know what these phobe cats are? Do you have any idea?
Speaker 1: No, you look so excited though, I just need to know.
Speaker 2: There's just skunks. Wait, skunks. Yeah, that's a phobe cat.
Speaker 1: That's a phobe cat.
Speaker 2: That's how they were known for a long time.
Speaker 1: I'm going to call them that from now on. That's
Speaker 1: a really cute name. Yeah, Phoby Cat, I love it.
Speaker 2: They were apparently one of the most feared animals on
Speaker 2: the Western plains, Oh my god, alongside the rabid wolf,
Speaker 2: which lived up to its you know, uh fear, because
Speaker 2: in one account, one one rabid wolf bit twelve men,
Speaker 2: eleven of whom died from rabies.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it wasn't just in the great outdoors that
Speaker 2: fear of rabies had grown. In cities and small towns
Speaker 2: all over the world. The fear was apparent. And it
Speaker 2: makes sense. One day, your beloved canaane companion is snuggling
Speaker 2: next to you while you read I'm going to cry,
Speaker 2: and the next its bite could spell certain death for
Speaker 2: both of you. It would have felt like a terrible,
Speaker 2: tragic betrayal in some ways. Yeah, Doctor juckyll, mister Hyde.
Speaker 2: These kinds of stories really led to that. It was
Speaker 2: amidst this rabies inspired fear and hysteria that Louis Pastor
Speaker 2: grew up and trained to be a scientist. He was
Speaker 2: a pretty important dude, as you know. Pasture claimed to
Speaker 2: be driven by a desire to alleviate the world world
Speaker 2: of unnecessary suffering, and he set his eyes on vaccination
Speaker 2: as a way to do so. He developed his first
Speaker 2: successful vaccine against anthrax. Then it was time for rabies. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's kind of curious why he chose to tackle rabies,
Speaker 2: since it wasn't one of the big killers of the day,
Speaker 2: and if he really wanted to alleviate human suffering, the
Speaker 2: research time and money may have been better spent on
Speaker 2: another disease whose death toll was much higher, like malaria, cholera, tuberculosis,
Speaker 2: something like that. But in even Pasture's own students suggests
Speaker 2: that Pasture was drawn by the flashiness of rabies as
Speaker 2: a way to gain maximum interest in his research. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 2: but all the way back then, sort of showmanship kind
Speaker 2: of a thing, no changes, but whatever. He went to work.
Speaker 2: He learned that you could collect the virus in the
Speaker 2: brain of an affected animal, which is still the way
Speaker 2: they test for rabies today, and this greatly reduced the
Speaker 2: danger of lab work. Now that they had the agent,
Speaker 2: they needed to find a way to attenuate it to
Speaker 2: make it less harmful, so when introduced by vaccine, it
Speaker 2: would not kill the person, but induce them to start
Speaker 2: making protective antibodies against it. Pasture found that air drying
Speaker 2: the spinal cord of intentionally infected rabbits would lead to
Speaker 2: a weakened virus.
Speaker 1: A you're drying it, yep, just like hang it out
Speaker 1: on your laundry line.
Speaker 2: I don't, I don't know. He tested a vaccination's schedule
Speaker 2: in dogs, or inoculation schedule, both as a preventative and
Speaker 2: as a post exposure treatment. The routine consisted of thirteen
Speaker 2: or so shots and started with the oldest, driest bit
Speaker 2: of spinal cord and progress until the last shot was
Speaker 2: a much more recent, much less weakened version of rabies.
Speaker 1: Interesting, so he just used like straight up spinal cord
Speaker 1: from a rabbit.
Speaker 2: I don't know exactly, Like, I don't think he was
Speaker 2: able to culture rabies, right, Yeah, I think he just
Speaker 2: used some final inoculation of so cool and it worked
Speaker 2: in dogs.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: Pasture was still very hesitant to try this out in humans,
Speaker 2: but he was soon confronted with a decision that didn't
Speaker 2: leave him long to waffle. In July of eighteen eighty five,
Speaker 2: a young boy had been bitten fourteen times by a
Speaker 2: grocer's dog.
Speaker 1: Oh my, god.
Speaker 2: Likely rabbit just all over his body. Oh, Pastures. Rabies
Speaker 2: research by this point was well known, and the family
Speaker 2: went to Paris to seek help from the man himself.
Speaker 2: Oh secretly terrified, but outwardly confident. Very important life. Yeah right,
Speaker 2: I wish Pasture agreed to treat the boy with the
Speaker 2: thirteen inoculations. He waded through many sleepless nights, sure that
Speaker 2: he had condemned the boy to death, but the inoculations
Speaker 2: proved successful and the boy made a full recovery. The
Speaker 2: news of this achievement spread like wildfire across the globe,
Speaker 2: and soon people began flocking to Paris to seek treatment.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Soon it was apparent that these inoculations, when given
Speaker 2: to a bite victim before any symptoms or signs of
Speaker 2: disease began, represented the first actual successful prevention for rabies.
Speaker 1: This is so cool. And what year was this again?
Speaker 2: Eighteen eighty five?
Speaker 1: Wow, so yeah it was.
Speaker 2: It was pretty big, yeah, and so this. The development
Speaker 2: of this vaccine marked a huge turning point in the
Speaker 2: history of rabies. Prevention was finally possible, and many countries
Speaker 2: who could afford to either manufacture or purchase Raybi's vaccine.
Speaker 2: The emphasis being on who could afford began to attempt eradication,
Speaker 2: and some were pretty successful. Actually, So the UK has
Speaker 2: been declared rabies free for almost one hundred years.
Speaker 1: It's an island, so they've got that going for them.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, even though the vaccine was in use and cases
Speaker 2: were dropping, people still get rabies and still die from rabies,
Speaker 2: almost all of them. Almost almost not Gina Geezy, who
Speaker 2: in two thousand and four was bitten by a bat.
Speaker 2: The fifteen year old Wisconsin native tested positive for rabies
Speaker 2: and was put into a medically induced coma to help
Speaker 2: her body fight off infection. Oh yeah, And after seven
Speaker 2: days in the coma, the infections seemed to be going away,
Speaker 2: and doctors slowly brought her out of the coma, which
Speaker 2: is unheard of.
Speaker 1: Crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Recovery was slow but steady, and Gina made a
Speaker 2: full recovery. She was the first known person to survive
Speaker 2: rabies without having received any portion of any rabies vaccine. Yeah.
Speaker 2: She did receive some immuna globulin, but no portion of
Speaker 2: any vaccine, which is insane.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Since then, other people have used this so called
Speaker 2: Milwaukee protocol, which is putting it into the coma, putting
Speaker 2: a person into a coma that.
Speaker 1: Was like developed by the guy who treated.
Speaker 2: Rodney Willoughby, but it's with varying success and so its
Speaker 2: effectiveness is still really heavily debated amongst physicians. So even
Speaker 2: though we may not have a treatment, we do have
Speaker 2: a vaccine. Aaron, tell me, where do we stand with
Speaker 2: rabies today?
Speaker 1: Okay, it's a good question. I actually this is not
Speaker 1: a good way to start our first episode of season two.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Let me tell you why, because it's interesting.
Speaker 1: The World Health Organization, according to their most recent reports,
Speaker 1: there are fifty nine thousand deaths per year from rabies.
Speaker 1: Nine fifty nine, so almost sixty thousand deaths from rabies.
Speaker 1: And they say about sixty percent of these deaths occur
Speaker 1: in Asia and thirty five percent are in Africa. And
Speaker 1: actually those fifty nine thousand only account for canine associated rabies,
Speaker 1: and that accounts for about ninety nine percent of all
Speaker 1: the rabies in the world. Okay, So that's what the
Speaker 1: World Health Organization says, and that report comes from a
Speaker 1: paper that was written in twenty fifteen. The problem is,
Speaker 1: there's another paper that was also written in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: which estimates seventeen thousand, four hundred deaths. It's quite from raybies.
Speaker 2: Different number.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that paper came from the global, Regional and
Speaker 1: National Life Expectancy all caused mortality and caused specific mortality,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't specific to rabies. It was this paper
Speaker 1: that looked at the overall causes of death across the
Speaker 1: world from two thousand and five to twenty fifteen, so
Speaker 1: trying to see what kind of progress we had made
Speaker 1: on various different infectious and non infectious diseases and other
Speaker 1: causes of mortality, and their estimates of rabies were so
Speaker 1: drastically lower than this one single paper that now the
Speaker 1: whole World Health Organization and everyone else is citing that
Speaker 1: came out in twenty fifteen. So I feel very like,
Speaker 1: I honestly don't know, and so we're maybe people will
Speaker 1: yell at us one way or the other about this,
Speaker 1: but I don't know who to believe, quite honestly, in
Speaker 1: this case, because the problem is that the vast majority
Speaker 1: of rabies deaths are not reported. And that's what it
Speaker 1: really comes down to is that all of these estimates
Speaker 1: are based on mathematical modeling and are based on our
Speaker 1: best guesses in all these various countries based on risk factors,
Speaker 1: based on demographics, and so we don't know how bad
Speaker 1: rabies is. What we do know is that in Africa
Speaker 1: and Asia, especially canine rabies is still a big problem.
Speaker 1: There are definitely tens of thousands of deaths that are
Speaker 1: occurring there due to dogs that are infect with rabies.
Speaker 1: The Pan American Health Organization, which is the World Health
Speaker 1: Organization for the Americas essentially, and they had a really
Speaker 1: huge campaign and their goal was to eliminate canine rabies
Speaker 1: by twenty fifteen throughout the Americas. Yeah, they didn't quite
Speaker 1: hit that, but they have reduced but canine rabies is
Speaker 1: almost almost non existent throughout the Americas, not just in
Speaker 1: the United States, which is incredible. So now throughout the Americas,
Speaker 1: the real root of transmission is through bats and through
Speaker 1: other wild animals. And so what is sort of the
Speaker 1: new goal. There is a quote United Against Rabies collaboration, okay,
Speaker 1: and it is a combination or a cross sectional effort
Speaker 1: between the World Health Organization, the World Organization for Animal Health,
Speaker 1: the Food and Agricultural Organization the FAO, and the Global
Speaker 1: Alliance for Rabies Control. So these four, is that right? One? Two, three, four, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Four organizations all working together have this new United Against
Speaker 1: Rabies collaboration and their goal is to have zero human
Speaker 1: rabies deaths by twenty thirty. Okay, so they've got some time,
Speaker 1: which I think is respectable. Granted, this thing literally just
Speaker 1: was published in June of this year. That's sort of
Speaker 1: where it stands now. There's a really big push to
Speaker 1: kind of get a better handle on what the disease
Speaker 1: burden really is and to really the real push is
Speaker 1: to vaccinate dogs. And so it's massive dog vaccination campaigns
Speaker 1: and trying to rid the world of canine rabies, which
Speaker 1: in theory, rids the world of almost all human rabies
Speaker 1: because there are very few cases of rabies outside of dogs.
Speaker 1: The World Health Organization stance and the CDC stance is
Speaker 1: that with proper vaccination and post exposure profile axis, this
Speaker 1: is a preventable disease. Right, So it's preventable by many
Speaker 1: different mechanisms. Number One, if you have a domestic animal,
Speaker 1: you need to vaccinate it. Like it's not an option law,
Speaker 1: it's a law, but that doesn't mean people follow it, right,
Speaker 1: And if you have interaction with an animal, that you
Speaker 1: have any suspicion might be or any bat whatsoever, then
Speaker 1: go to your doctor and say I got bit by
Speaker 1: a bat, and then you can be treated. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the World Health Organization, I will say the
Speaker 1: numbers that they do know for sure is that fifteen
Speaker 1: million people around the world receive post exposure profile axis.
Speaker 1: That means that we know that potentially hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of lives are being saved by the fact that this exists.
Speaker 1: It's almost it's pretty much one hundred percent effective.
Speaker 2: And so wait and see, will kill you, yes, if
Speaker 2: you are infected.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not to scare you.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, not to scare you, because it has
Speaker 2: a very low incidence relative to some of the other
Speaker 2: diseases that are out there, and it's entirely preventable. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And so waiting and seeing it's it's not worth it, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah? Oh was that fun?
Speaker 2: That was so much fun. This is one of the
Speaker 2: craziest it is diseases with covered.
Speaker 1: It's such a it's a fascinating virus from a biology perspective,
Speaker 1: and it's so interesting the way that it's sort of
Speaker 1: crawled up the neurons of our collective consciousness.
Speaker 2: I like that yeah, exactly, yeah, exactly, just the way
Speaker 2: it manifests in your body.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very it's very crazy.
Speaker 2: That's wonderful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, wow, all right, We as always will post
Speaker 1: all of our links to our sources on our website
Speaker 1: this podcast will Kill You dot com. And I'll give
Speaker 1: a specific shout out to doctor Trevat Hemichuda, I think
Speaker 1: that's their name, who wrote a lot of the articles
Speaker 1: that I read, and who is one of the World
Speaker 1: Health Organization like experts on the raebi's committee. But okay,
Speaker 1: I'll post all of the articles.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, I read a couple of books. There's a
Speaker 2: book called Rabbit by Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy, and
Speaker 2: that's a popular science book which is about the history
Speaker 2: and culture of rabies. And I also took from a
Speaker 2: book called Historical Perspectives of Rabies in Europe and the
Speaker 2: Mediterranean Basin. Finally, the information on the evolutionary history of
Speaker 2: rabies virus I took from an article called host switching
Speaker 2: in lyssavirus history from the Chiopterra to the Carnivora orders.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I want to read that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really interesting.
Speaker 1: That sounds so fascinating, so chiroptor are bats by the way, Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: thank you.
Speaker 2: But yeah, as always, thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was really fun.
Speaker 2: Thanks to Bloodmobile for providing all the music.
Speaker 1: And you know what, wash your hands, you have filthy animals.
Speaker 3: A